Back to Earth: The Phil Edit NOW ON YOUTUBEZZ!!!!

[Phil]

EDIT:

‘Tis done.

Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QIb83-2Vuw
Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pxpp3BOedkE
Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPhzXmMEjrI

————————————-
ORIGINAL POST:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btWtLNY523A
Just the intro. Which may be as far as I ever get. But let’s hope not.

Topic

[Mnoooah]

Not half bad, really, although I liked your opening and the ending best; when you’re having fun with it, rather than compressing it.

[Phil]

>I liked your opening and the ending best; when you?re having fun with it, rather than compressing it.

I’d like to have done more of that kind of thing (indeed I had a few ideas for them…) but figured it wasn’t worth investing TOO much time into what was basically an experiment anyway.

Regardless, thanks! And even the negative feedback is interesting; it’s been a pretty fun little exercise.

[Jo]

Guybrush Threepwood: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rREKIPsDi6g

[Mnoooah]

You’re welcome. Like the laugh track experiment, now we know what it would look like. The creative bits though can stand on their own, so if you’re inclined, make them anyway. You don’t need your legs to edit, right?

[Mnoooah]

Oh my god, they’re right. You’re a fictional pirate that has somehow escaped the video game world.

[Phil]

>Guybrush Threepwood: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rREKIPsDi6g

…wow.

[hummingbird]

Only watched the first part, but I think you’ve missed the point of most of part 1.

You’re taking for granted that the audience for BtE is as familar with RD as you are.
Not every viewer will be have seen the show before or will remember it well from 10 years earlier, and Part 1 serves to re-establish who these characters are. While you may think that scenes you cut are superfluous they actually serve that very important function.

The opening scenes and the tentacle/holiday scene for example: in the first scene the Rimmer/scutter and Rimmer/Lister exchanges do a great job of telling us exactly who these people are, and likewise for Kryten and Cat in the tentacle/holiday scene.

In addition, they needed to establish the set-up as a whole for an unfamiliar audience. Cutting straight to the diving bell at the beginning does nothing to explain where they are or what they’re doing, whereas retaining those first few scenes does.

[Seb Patrick]

See, what you’ve done there, is you’ve confused “editing Back to Earth down into half an hour that’s still Red Dwarf” with “turning it into Arrested Development”. An easy mistake to make, I’ll grant.

[Pete Part Three]

>You?re taking for granted that the audience for BtE is as familar with RD as you are.

Didn’t Doug do this in Part Three?

[Phil]

>Not every viewer will be have seen the show before or will remember it well from 10 years earlier, and Part 1 serves to re-establish who these characters are.

I actually agree with you on the structural desirability of those scenes…I just didn’t think the quality warranted them. The skutters and Rimmer hanging the picture were pretty lame. The tomato gag was overlong and (hey, again, IMHO) awful.

The Cat stuff had some good jokes, and was one of my favorite scenes form the weekend, but definitely needed trimming.

And honestly, I’m not sure Red Dwarf NEEDS an intro sequence for people unfamiliar. (This is a discussion in itself, though.) Very few people, comparatively, start watching the show with either The End or Psirens, but they seem to stick around and pick up the characters without any problem. If the material is good enough, the audience will want to find out about the characters and will watch more carefully. If the material isn’t good, a direct “here’s specifically how these characters are going to try to be funny” isn’t much help down the road to enjoyment.

>?turning it into Arrested Development?

It was remarkable the way the intro I uploaded a few nights ago night concealed that surprising fact, wasn’t it?

[Seb Patrick]

>It was remarkable the way the intro I uploaded a few nights ago night concealed that surprising fact, wasn?t it?

Yeah, but I thought that was a one-off gag – not the WHOLE gag. And if it was your intention to basically make an elaborate joke along the lines of “the way to make BTE half an hour of TV that I enjoy is to make it into Arrested Development”, then didn’t you ruin that by showing us the intro in advance? I mean, you’re a pretty funny guy, Phil – you must have SOME idea about comic timing, right?

[Phil]

>an elaborate joke along the lines of ?the way to make BTE half an hour of TV that I enjoy is to make it into Arrested Development?

Actually that was just my solution (successful or not) to the problems caused by editing the footage. Music would jump around, characters would snap from one position to the other. Once I realized I’d need some way of smoothing that out I figured I’d do so with narration, which led me to think I could also have some AD fun along the way. The music, obviously, became another easy fix. (If I didn’t have to for cutting reasons, I would have been happy to leave the actual music from the specials.)

It’s just a way of smoothing over those moments (again, successful or not, they’re smoother than they WOULD have been with my small amount of editing experience) and having fun with the format.

[Dave]

It’s slimmer, but not better.

[thomasaevans]

Dorksville springs instantly to mind.

[Author]

Replies